Saturday, July 01, 2006

Falling Hare - "What am I doing!?!?!" Mckimson subtle and wild

Here's more amazing animation by Bob McKimson while being directed by Bob Clampett.(The close up of Bugs is animated by Bill Melendez-I think it's the first scene he animated for Clampett, before that he was Rod Scribner's assistant!)

Most of the McKimson scene is subtle until Bugs says "What am I doing!?". Then obviously, Clampett had to draw extremes for McKimson, because there is no way in Hell McKimson would ever draw anything that exaggerated on his own. Check out his own cartoons if you don't believe me!

Even while animating such a wide open mouth, he still manages to make it look really solid.

What a team!

If you only knew how I envy the working situation of the 1940s.

I would die to make some full animation with all the animators in the next room where I could milk them for everything they don't even know they are capable of!

Mark Kausler also did some great custom animation in Stimpy's Invention-he did the butt dance (Stimpy on the floor bouncing his butt cheeks) during the Happy Happy Joy Joy song.http://www.cataroo.com/hkaus.html

Greg Manwaring animated some killer scenes in commercials for me. - Sody Pop jumping in the air and yelling "Wow, Psycho!"http://manwaring.blogspot.com/

What year was that commercial done? I love how you animate girls. The scenes in the shower for "Beach Frenzy" with girls are amazing. I did what you said John on "Falling Hare" commentary with Bill Melendez. On the scene when Bugs Bunny gets hit with the wrench, I freezed framed all the bugs Bunny heads. Great animation!!.........

John, for the love of Jesus, what ever happened to doing full-animation shorts for podcast download?! Didn't you believe this to be the only medium where you could ressurect the old Warner Bros. cartoon unit production method? We're all dying to see you make "Two Dirty Pussies" just this way.

How much money would you need to do a three minute short like that, with all the animation done in-house?

I agree with Chino, John. Isn't the internet a viable market for small studio work still? I mean, Icebox fell through, but that was before we had all these video ipods and cartoons on cell phones and whatnot...

Watching Bob McKimson animation makes me want to go back and rework my old animations for school. There's just some insane stuff in there. And not insane eyes bulging out and limbs popping off stuff that you see now and then. Stuff like the way his hands move really naturally and fluidly, and the perfect twist in his legs. It's all incredilbly intimidating in a lot of ways.

>>- Who animated the scene in Sven Hoek where Stimpy freaks out and laughs after getting kicked in the head by a mule?<<

>John K said:

I did. But it was real scribbly and Bob Jaques made it all smooth for me.<

Sorry - Wrong! Chris Sauve animated that scene. John animated the scene before that where Stimpy crashes onto the floor and spins around. Bob and Kelly (of Carbunkle Cartoons) had a horrible time trying to get the scene to work as I recall.

Hey John, there's something I don't understand. Why do you geek out when Bugs acts like a human, with subtle non over the top movements? It's great animation, sure, but it's not very cartoony.

If you like that type of animation so much then how come you don't like Disney movies? Where human characters act very much like real humans. Maybe i'm just missing your point but when you say cartoons should be cartoony and then you show stuff where Bugs is acting like a human? I don't get it!

That's probably because most human characters in any Disney movie (save a few) act very convincingly human, something I'd agree with. I absolutely hate the rotoscoped-looking stuff in "Snow White". It dates the movie so badly.

>>Hey John, there's something I don't understand. Why do you geek out when Bugs acts like a human, with subtle non over the top movements? It's great animation, sure, but it's not very cartoony.<<

Good question.

A lot of critics of Clampett think he is nothing but wild, over the top stuff. I'm posting these scenes to point out how much subtle and human acting there is in his cartoons.

Clampett is not a one note director like Avery and others. He is full of variety and contrasts. That's why I find him so interesting-he tries everything and anything and balances many different approaches and ideas at the same time.

My own cartoon acting is also very human and subtle. I study live action and real people more than cartoons for my expressions and poses.

The first cartoonist to even try natural acting was Bob Clampett. Disney never did it.

The fact that Clampett's characters are so convincing as living creatures makes the impossible cartoony things that happen to them seem even more magical and make you feel like you are in the cartoon magic world.

Other directors put the audience at a distance by having much more stylized simplistic character acting. That's fine for simpler folks in the audience, but not as engaging an experience for me, Eddie and other sophisticated fellows.

I want to believe these cartoons are really happening, since much of real life existence is so mundane and tedious.

Thanks for posting up my favorite scene from "Falling Hare". You are so right. McKimsons animation looks much better in Clampetts cartoons. Mckimson was a better animator then a directer.

Jesse Oliver

P.S. "You animated Stimpy freakin out after being kicked by the horse in "Sven Hoek"? My god, that was a great animation peace. Also, as Jorge said early on here check out the APC DVD trailer on Youtube.com

hi john thanks for all your analisis on bob clampett's work. i've re-discovered him since your post and it's blowing my mind and i'm looking animation in a hole diferent way. i remember when i was a kid watching falling hare and man i love that cartoon!! i didn't know at that time who directed what or what good animation was i just laught out loud by seing bugs loosing his temp with that little gremlin. there was a lot of action, screaming and weird expretions that have stuck into my brain since then and it's very cool now watching this cartoon again and all clampett work in a much deeper way.keep it coming!

I study live action and real people more than cartoons for my expressions and poses.

That's why your cartoons are the only ones with those stupid multiple chin-dimples people get when they screw up their faces. I love the ones on Stimpy in RUBBER NIPPLE SALESMEN. I also love the variety of ways that ren gets pissed and/or smacks Stimpy. The chief's bathroom is a really good one... so is the one in the living room. Donald Duck often gets mad the same way. --THAT'S formula.

Disney feature animation to me means, make almost everything look like balloons filled with whipped cream hanging from a rubber band, and make all the arcs of motion really swishy like tildes. Then the action sequence comes and they may actually try to keep you awake for a few seconds. Anime often does a similar thing, except, they reason, why make the slow sequences all gushy like Disney, when a single drawing, held nearly for eternity, would be even more boring?

I like Shere Khan in the Jungle Book. I've always thought of it as a good performance, but now I'm going to really look at it. I like DANCE OF THE HOURS in FANTASIA. Preston Blair worked on it. The Disney aesthetic peaked about that time for me.

Well i like all types of animation, Disney, anime, Warner Bros, Hannah barbera, Pixar. I think if everything was Spumco style or Warner Bros style i'd get bored of it. I like watching all the different styles.

Alot of anime does hold on an image whilst the characters are talking but I think thats more to do with saving money than it being bad animation. Done right it can make a scene more powerful though.

I saw a Bugs Bunny cartoon on tv about a week ago. I think it was called Baseball Bugs. Anyway, before that I had just been watching the Baseball episode of Samurai Champloo, Baseball Blues, and I thought the way Mugen pitched the ball and the way the ball travelled through the air was more cartoony than what Bugs was doing.

This doesn't really have anything to do with, well, anything really. I just thought i'd mention it. :D

Okay, i'm not sure how to post a link but right at the end of this clip compilation it shows a scene from the baseball episode of Samurai Champloo. John says to back everything you say up with a clip so here it is.

Well i like all types of animation, Disney, anime, Warner Bros, Hannah barbera, Pixar. I think if everything was Spumco style or Warner Bros style i'd get bored of it. I like watching all the different styles.

Sure but my problem with Disney features and Anime is essentially the same --mostly I feel like I am killing time waiting for the next money shot. Neither of them have much acting. Disney makes everything jiggle, bounce, and gush, and anime freezes it. I have to consider either one bad animation if it's not engaging me for way too long.

Hey John -You're always talking about solid construction and pointing out how solid McKimson is in Clampett cartoons, and I buy that 100%, particularly after seeing how sloppy the construction is in some Chuck Jones shorts from the fifties (I'm thinkin', for example, of the scene in Wackiki Wabbit when Bugs has subtitles). Here's the thing though: when I say "slop," I'm referring to the inconsistent construction from frame to frame, but in some past posts (and this may be simple misinterpretation on my part), I've seen you refer to single frames of a Clampett 'toon, marvelling at the solid construction. Are you using single frames to refer us to the animated scene, are you referring to Clampett's Bugs design, or am I missing some concept about "solidity" that's visible to an educated eye in a still frame?

A much better file of the Old Navy Flares commercial is on the Chuck Gammage site. The crappy framerate on the .mov file posted here makes it seem as if the original animation was sloppy, which it wasn't.

Okay, i'm not sure how to post a link but right at the end of this clip compilation it shows a scene from the baseball episode of Samurai Champloo. John says to back everything you say up with a clip so here it is.

Since you brought up Samuria Champloo, i just nwta to mnetion its' creator, Shinichirô Watanabe. I don't understand how he creates shows with great animation and artwork such as Samurai Champloo and Cowboy bebop, but he creates rather un-appealing characters, minus a few exceptions. I try to enjoy his wokr, I really do but the main characters in his shows just don't click with me.

>>Well, no they don't. Not in the least. They are very unnaturally stylized and act like Disney characters, not like humans.

And everyone has the same few expressions. <<

You wrote about this in ur exchnage with Barrier. Same stock movements: folding their arms, flustery looks, stock expressions. I agree with that yuo said about if someone acted like they do in a Disney cartoon in real life, you'd die of embarassment.

>>I saw a Bugs Bunny cartoon on tv about a week ago. I think it was called Baseball Bugs. Anyway, before that I had just been watching the Baseball episode of Samurai Champloo, Baseball Blues, and I thought the way Mugen pitched the ball and the way the ball travelled through the air was more cartoony than what Bugs was doing.<<

I think Disney toons in general were made to be more cute and less funny, which explains the lack personality and human in the characters and animation. Only when they started to make animated films that changed, but not imidatetly.

"Aside from paying for more drawings per second, what makes full-animation so much more expensive than limited-animation?"

You're not paying for "more" drawings, you're paying for a)a great animator, or at least a good one; b)the hours per day it takes the animator to do a scene; c)an assistant and/or cleanup artists to cleanup and inbetween the animation. The cost of a camera to shoot, test, final the animation, ink & paint...et cetera.The cost of limited animation overseas versus even limited animation here in the US is ridiculous: in Korea, the same animator might get a couple of doillars US an hour, where here, if you can find a non-union person to animate for you, he's not going to do it for less than he'd make at Barnes & Noble. 7 minutes is a lot of money/drawing--22 minutes is a hell of a lot more than that. Animation is time consuming and requires experience, and those guys don't work for nothing--they always have full time, well-paid jobs already.OTOH it is possible to animate a personal project and get stuff online all by yourself, provided you really want to do it...it just won't pay the bills.

ahh yeah Shamploo has some astonishing animation... one of the increasing number of anime shows where they'r not afraid to let animators do whole scenes sometimes totally off model in their own style... most notably the incredible psychadelic scene in one episode

Anyone who loves animation (and is able to bypass the cognative dissonence that otherwise intelligent animation types seem to experience when it comes to anime) should check out anipages daily... it is one of the only sites to have info + comment on the actual animation in anime and the animators behind it! As opposed to all the inane fandom junk filling the rest of the internet....

The Karisuma Animators page there is especiallyessential reading, overview of the most important animators their notable scenes + works. When you realise who animated what it all starts to make sense...

On the subject of animated acting, I'd be interested to hear what John would think about Satoshi Kon's "Tokyo Godfathers" which i think has some pretty astonishing acting...

>>P.C. Unfunny said... Since you brought up Samuria Champloo, i just nwta to mnetion its' creator, Shinichirô Watanabe. I don't understand how he creates shows with great animation and artwork such as Samurai Champloo and Cowboy bebop, but he creates rather un-appealing characters, minus a few exceptions. I try to enjoy his wokr, I really do but the main characters in his shows just don't click with me.<<

Shinichiro watanabe is my favorite anime director. He creates the best shows.

I guess it's just personal taste, but i really like the characters in his shows. But it's cool that you at least try to enjoy them.

Also, thanks to Anonymous for posting those clips of both cartoons.

What do you think about the comparison John? To make the best judgement you should watch the second clip of Samurai Champloo because it doesn't have any edits.

John K.: I also might have a studio interested in doing a CG Movie of Weekend Pussy Hunt. You'd like what I'm gonna do with CG. It won't look gay like the stuff you're used to. CG is here to stay. Might as well make some that doesn't look like gay porn.

is that tru cg WPH is that in the works ? that would be super awesome man !!!

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